A former Texas music teacher and choir leader, Marshall Applewhite was the founder of the Heaven’s Gate, a religious group which organized the largest American mass suicide since Jonestown. Applewhite lured and brainwashed willing followers with promises that extraterrestrials would grant them new bodies for spiritual enlightenment. In 1985, Applewhite and his followers rented a mansion in San Diego and planned a mass suicide they deemed as the “Final Exit”. They proceeded to end their lives by voluntarily suffocating themselves with plastic bags and overdosing on drugs.

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Police officer turned killer, Laurie Bembenek, was convicted for the 1981 murder of her then husband’s ex-wife, Christine Schultz. Schultz’s home was broken into and she was gagged and blindfolded along with her sons. The cold-blooded killer then made the sons listen as she cruelly shot their mother dead. Bembenek claimed she was framed but the evidence was overwhelming. The murder weapon was her husband’s police revolver and fibers from a wig she owned were also found at the scene. Testimony claimed that Bembenek often spoke about killing Schultz, out of jealous rage. Eight years into her sentence, Bembenek again made headlines after she escaped from prison – an episode that inspired books, movies and the slogan, “Run Bambi, Run.”

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Hitchhiking, sex worker, Aileen Wuornos garnered national attention after she was charged with murdering at least six different men in less than a year by shooting them at point-blank range. Wuornos’ sanity proved to be a challenge for prosecutors, but she confidently plead guilty to each charge made against her. She was executed by lethal injection in 2002. Charlize Theron won an Oscar for her portray of Wuornos in the movie, “Monster.”

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The Canadian serial killer, alongside her husband Paul Bernardo, drugged, raped and murdered three women, including her own younger sister. While the world watched in shock as her sentencing unfolded, Karla struck a deal claiming that she had been an unwilling accomplice to her husband and walked away a free woman in 2005 after only serving 12 years in prison. In recent years, she was met with protesters trying to prevent her from working in a school.

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18-year-old Melissa Drexler attended high school in New Jersey where she was impregnated by her boyfriend in 1997. Ignoring her stomach cramps, Drexler arrived at her school’s Prom and gave birth to her son in a bathroom stall. The miraculous moment turned into murder when the teen suffocated the child, wrapping him in a plastic bag and discarding her baby in the trash. Drexler returned to the dance floor as if nothing happened, blaming the blood trail on her period. It's not until janitors discovered the deceased baby in the dumpster that Drexler was finally discovered for the killer she is.

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